A DRUG dealer caught weighing out wraps of heroin in his bedroom has been jailed for four and a half years.

Father of two Shaun Currell, 31, told Teesside Crown Court a drugs gang had threatened to harm his wife and family unless he packaged them up to pay off a debt over Christmas presents for his children.

He claimed the heroin had been dropped off at his home in Hartlepool just five minutes before police raided it with a search warrant.

Jailing him, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, Judge Peter Fox QC, said he believed hardly a word of Currell’s story.

The judge said the gang would not have trusted him with more than £4,000 of heroin if it was his first involvement with the drugs trade, as he claimed.

Prosecutor Joe Spencer said that when police smashed their way into Currell’s terraced house at teatime on February 24, he flung a carrier bag containing the heroin from the bathroom window, and packages landed in his neighbours’ back gardens.

His wife and two children, aged three and five, were downstairs when he was arrested, and a search of his bedroom revealed a plastic sheet, digital scales and three mobile phones on the bed, plastic bags on the chest of drawers, and brown wrapping paper on top of the wardrobe.

A carrier bag which had spilled heroin and eight wraps of the Class A drug were found in two neighbouring gardens. The total value of heroin recovered was £4,224.

Mr Spencer added: “His fingerprints were found on the carrier bag and individual wraps, and he said that he had been set up.

“He said he had been asked to sort the drugs out for someone he owed debts to. He said he borrowed £500 from this person before Christmas for the kids, and the person wanted £700. He said it was the first and only time that he had done it.”

Currell said in evidence that he had been told by the man who delivered the drugs package to make up wraps of between three grammes and 3.5 grammes and to leave them behind the nearby B and Q store an hour later.

He said he would not name names because they had threatened to hurt his wife and children, and he claimed one of the police officers told him after the raid “You do know that you are the fall guy”.

The judge said: “I hardly believe a word that I have heard from this defendant in this hearing.

“I reject his evidence and sentence him on the basis of his being considerably concerned in the supply of heroin in his community, not necessarily one who deals with the eventual purchaser but as a more important figure, one who prepares the retailer’s stock for reward.”

Currell, of Windermere Road, Hartlepool, was jailed for four and a half years after he pleaded guilty to possession of a Class A drug with intent to supply, and theft of a £250 alarm system from B and Q while on bail on December 2.